This multi-spirit distillery started in Corvallis, Oregon, in 2004 and relocated to Southeast Portland the following year. They make Aviation Gin, Krogstad Aquavit, White Dog Whiskey, and celebrated the release of Volstead Vodka to start February 2012.

Created by PDX Jazz, the US Bank Portland Jazz Festival showcases local and Pacific Northwest jazz talent as well as widely known musicians and singers like Branford Marsalis, Afro-Cuban All-Stars, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Bill Frisell, and Charlie Hunter.

Once a collection of hulking early-20th-century warehouses, this area just north of downtown is now Portland’s trendiest neighborhood, chockablock with high-end loft condos, see-and-be-seen lounges and restaurants, and natty shelter shops and fashion boutiques.

On Saturdays—and, despite the name, Sundays from March through late December—the nation’s largest ongoing outdoor arts and crafts market unfolds beneath the Burnside Bridge (in 2009, the location will change).

The Museum: During a 1998 reading at the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans, the concept of a museum dedicated to velvet paintings was discussed, and since then, Caren Anderson and Carl Baldwin, now museum co-owners, began collecting, opening the Velveteria in 2005.